


Someone told me

by WahlBuilder



Category: Mars: War Logs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Technomancers, Brotherly Bonding, Cultural Differences, Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Technomantic Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 11:17:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17487134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: When Sean has a Bad Day, Roy is there to help.





	Someone told me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Modlisznik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Modlisznik/gifts).



> (I guess you and I are like Roy and Sean.  
> And you know how much I like to challenge the canon.  
> They should have been brothers.)

Roy has wondered how it would go when it came. Would Sean be violent? Raging? Close to overloading? Or would he go silent? Retreat into his personal brand of stoicism that he wears like armour? Would he turn into a venomous jellyfish, stinging anyone who comes close? He wonders, imagines. Any variant is possible. That’s the shit of it.

When it comes, Roy notices it not in Sean’s face. The bastard knows how to wear a mask, how to keep his face unreadable, and it doesn’t make Roy’s life any easier. (Sometimes he thinks Sean forgets to be anything but unreadable.)

(It is strange how he must rely entirely on his training with Sean; Sean doesn’t mock him for his inability to read faces.)

(They are of one blood, even if it’s the blood they’ve spilt of each other. Brothers, because Roy restarted Sean’s heart; dragged him out, told Sean that if he doesn’t get to die, Sean doesn’t either. Innocence was watching, and Sean has a family; and there was Mary, too; Sean blessed her later before she left on her own, because Roy couldn’t, because he wasn’t _that_ anymore.)

(Wasn’t he? Isn’t he? He spills salt for Tenacity, gives a blessing to Innocence, and loves them with dread, and sees that dread reflected in Sean’s eyes.)

(They have a duty.

It’s that Roy isn’t sure what his is.)

(He teaches Sean electro-signing. Sean asks for a name. Roy gives him his own, but with a different arc. The name alone, without electricity, reads ‘King’. The spark reads ‘Returning Home’.)

(Sean doesn’t have the pathological need to run away.)

(Sean isn’t a coward.)

When it starts, nothing changes in Sean outwardly. He charms a trader, exchanges jokes with Tenacity (their witticisms are the bane of Roy’s existence). He is, as ever, attentive towards Innocence (his face goes dark, shuts down, whenever he sees with how much expertise Innocence handles a rifle).

(Sean can be so charming. He’s _good_ with people when he cares to be—and he cares _about_ them. Sometimes, Roy feels less around him. It passes.)

(Sean used to send people to death.)

(He never calls Roy crazy.)

There is unevenness in Sean’s usually tightly coiled field. A small aberration in the outer contour, polarities out of alignment by a fraction of a degree. Roy knows. He knows what it is.

(The world is so loud and bright and unbearable. They used to cover his eyes, the mentors, a soft broad blindfold that covered his ears, too. They told him: _Feel, child._

And he felt—so much, so clearly. Colours that had no names, sounds that could not be described. The flow of life, right through him. Vibrations of atoms. The distant Sun, barraging Mars with radiation.

He feels it _all_.)

He lets Sean go to their hideout unconfronted. Gives him half an hour to stew, then follows him.

It’s one of the fancier hideouts (Tenacity’s), a whole house, actually (Roy doesn’t ask why or how Tenacity has it), and Sean has a room of his own, even if it’s temporary.

He doesn’t bother knocking. If Sean decides to off him, he’ll deal with it.

(He wonders whether giving Sean a room of his own is a mistake. Maybe he is used to sharing living space with his kindred.)

(Is he Sean’s kindred?)

The sight that greets him is one of those he imagined: Sean on the small bed, his back to the world.

So this will go like this. But still, he has to get more info.

Roy closes the door behind himself.

Sean sighs. It is loud in the small room, louder than the generator working diligently in the kitchen, louder than the city outside. Loud, and as long as two centuries at the least.

‘What do you want, Roy?’

Venom it is, then. But not very dangerous so far.

He goes to the bed. Sean is a long line. Between the four of them, he’s very pale—no, drained of colour. It’s not just his hair or his eyes, or the pallor of his skin. It’s that weary sigh.

It’s Sean’s heart stopping, back in the camp.

‘I’m not letting you wither like this.’

Sometimes, words are hard. Sometimes, words are impossible. He knows other ways, however.

‘Fuck off, Roy.’ It holds no venom at all, no heat—nothing. Sean stirs. He has a hand under his cheek.

(Sometimes, Sean strokes his forehead where his wires used to be, where they were _soldered_ to the connectors, to his very flesh.)

‘I’m not fucking off.’ It’s always pretty entertaining to hear Sean, with his noble nose and high cheekbones, swear. (He’s a soldier. They fucked him up so he could be theirs alone—and they punished him because he refused to be theirs.)

But not entertaining now.

‘Aren’t you always about giving other people space?’

‘Tell me again to fuck off,’ he dares Sean. ‘Tell me—with how your field is clinging to mine.’

Sean half-turns to him, a frown twisting his face. ‘I’ve no patience for your bullshit mojo right now. So kindly fuck off.’

‘It’s not mojo. It’s who I am.’

‘Go away.’

And yet. Yet, his field is clinging.

They don’t align, not always. Words mean different things, and they are different people.

But he restarted Sean’s heart. He can restart it again if need be.

Sean is a good man who was told he is not a man at all. And maybe, somewhere along the way, in some part of himself, Sean believed it.

Believes it still.

Roy sits down on the bed—and doesn’t get a kick to the back. Sean only shifts closer to the wall, gives him space. Doesn’t hiss out another curse.

Roy leans back over Sean’s legs, his shoulder blades pressed to the warm wall. The city is buzzing, the world is thrumming, unbearable.

He closes his eyes. ‘When I bring you to your family, I shall give you a different modifier to your name.’

‘I’ll have no need then,’ Sean murmurs. Sean’s field is spiky, and crawling all over Roy’s. He smooths its edges a little.

‘You will. Because I won’t just stop calling you.’

The bed creaks. ‘What will it be?’

He smiles—and send the modifier through Sean’s field.

‘Oh fuck. How is this _not_ mojo? What does it mean?’

The beauty of electro-signing is that, sometimes, you don’t need to sign at all.

‘“Twin”. You will be “King-Twin”. I can sing to you.’

‘By the Shadow. You sing, too?’

He smiles.

In the city, Innocence is walking through the AllLights; Tenacity is haggling someone to tears.

‘I do.’

The bed creaks again. Sean shifts against him.

‘Then sing to me.’

Sean’s field is not all good—but not all misaligned anymore either. And not alone.

Roy sings.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fleurie's [Love Has No Limits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K3hpb-wijU). And that's the song Roy sings.


End file.
